


A Bright Future Today

by ladyoneill



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Happy, Post-Canon, Professors, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well in the future, Willow is doing something she loves, something she, frankly, never thought she'd survive to do back on the Hellmouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bright Future Today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [batyatoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/gifts).



> Ignores the comics, well in the future.

With all the grant money she brought to the university, she was allowed to decorate her office in the two hundred and fifty odd year building anyway she wanted. Willow went with Regency elegance, complimenting the white molding and old, polished wood floor. The chairs have new covers, the curtains are new as well to match, but the chairs themselves, tables and bookcases are authentic. She likes the antiquity surrounding her. Her desk is her pride and joy, hand tooled mahogany with original porcelain medallions on the legs and drawers that depict Greek goddesses.

It's late Spring in Cambridge, the weather warm and the sun shining, so she slips off her lightweight cardigan sweater, revealing a simple blue sundress. She has a class to teach later in the day and she likes to look professional when she does so. For lab work she usually wears well-worn clothes that can handle sparks from tools and grease stains. She uses both her doctorates in electrical engineering and applied physics to work on top secret projects for the government.

Not military work; she's always refused that, but her current job is looking towards the first manned mission to Mars.

Today Willow's entertaining a writer for a prestigious scholarly journal. She's finally allowed to discuss the work finished almost a year ago on a precision, hand-held laser, and she's excited to explain the details. Usually she has to dumb down the science, but the writer sitting across from her has worked in the field of applied physics for over twenty years. For once she can use all the technical terms. The journal itself is not for the masses, so hopefully the article will be just as detailed as their discussion.

She has never regretted going into science, getting a chaired professorship at Harvard, teaching eager young minds. Buffy and Xander remain her closest friends. She continues to use her magic, even does research occasionally to help the young slayers, but it's been eighteen years since Sunnydale fell, and they've all retired, gotten real lives and real jobs. Xander has a wife and two kids, and owns a construction company in Pennsylvania. To the shock of pretty much everyone, Buffy is an elementary school teacher in a small town in Indiana. And Willow gets to use her brain in ways she never imagined back in the struggle and horror of high school.

As the writer asks his first question, Willow smiles and begins to speak.

End


End file.
